Meaning & readings
noodles, wheat flour
On’yomi メン、ベン
Kun’yomi むぎこ
Origin
This character combines two components to represent noodles. The left side, 麦 (wheat), identifies the material that noodles are typically made from. The right side, 面 (face or surface), suggests the flat, sheet-like quality of noodle dough before it is cut and cooked. Together, these parts create a character that means both the finished noodles and the wheat flour used to make them — capturing both the ingredient and the characteristic appearance of the food.
AI-generated (claude-haiku-4-5), not yet reviewed. Formation type (automated guess): Compound ideographic (combined meanings).
Reference
- Strokes
- 16
- Kangxi radical
- 199
- Grade
- Jōyō (secondary school)
- Frequency rank
- #2331 (newspapers)
- Former JLPT
- —
- Unicode
- U+09EBA